You Like Your Girls Insane
by JohnGreenGirl
Summary: A set of one-shots set during Asylum, focusing on Kit and Grace. Please review and tell me what you think! [COMPLETE]
1. Dance

_-Dance-_

Life in Briarcliff gets repetitive quickly. Even with Grace around to lighten the mood a little, Kit was soon bored with the routine of medication, questionable meals, working in the kitchen, and the insufferable, always playing _Dominique._

Some days Kit thinks that the residents of Briarcliff didn't come to the asylum lacking sanity but rather lost it after being subjected to Sister Jude's music choices.

But one day, while watching Pepper turn in lazy circles in a beam of early-spring sunlight, Kit gets an idea. He get up from his chair and walks across the room to where Grace sits, working half-heartedly on a needlepoint.

They had decided, since the last time they were caught by Sister Jude and punished by the cane along with a promise to send one of them to a different institution should they be caught again, that it would be best to keep their distance from each other in front of watching eyes. So Grace's large eyes grow even larger when she lifts her head to see Kit standing before her, a smile on his face and his hand extended to her.

"What are you doing?" Grace asks in a shocked whisper. Still, despite her surprise, she places her hand in Kit's.

" _We_ are dancing," Kit says, pulling her to her feet.

Grace drops her needlepoint in her chair and allows Kit to lead her away from the others, closer to the empty space where Pepper is twirling.

"I thought we agreed—" Grace starts, but Kit cuts her off.

"It's just dancing," he says. "Not even Sister Jude could find a reason to cane people for just dancing."

 _Dominique_ doesn't have the best beat for dancing, but Kit takes Grace's hand and places it on his shoulder before resting on of his on her waist. He takes the other and leads her through a few steps, trying to find a rhythm within the French tune.

It takes a few minutes of trial and error, but the two find a routine that Grace is fairly certain no one has ever done before.

While Grace laughs, the sound catching the attention of many of their fellow asylum patients, Kit spins her around and around until he has to wrap his arms around her to keep her upright.

Pepper is still twirling, but she is laughing now, too, and clapping her hands together.

"Isn't this better than needlepoint, Gracie?" Kit whispers against her ear, still holding her up as she tries to regain her balance.

Grace is just happy to have Kit here, his warms arms around her and chasing away the chill she can never quite escape here in the asylum.

Their revelry has garnered more applause, more and more patients joining Pepper in her praise.

Kit lets go of Grace to face his audience, giving them a deep bow that makes the applause go wild. He smiles over at Grace, who takes her skirt in her hands and drops into a curtsy, getting her own applause as a reward.

The happiness is cut short when they hear footsteps fast approaching, like someone is running. Kit and Grace run back to their seats, taking up their previous activities of staring blankly at the wall and sewing.

Those with enough of their minds left to know what is coming return to their activities, too. Just moments later, Sister Jude and Sister Mary Eustice burst through the door.

"See, I told you they were fine," Sister Mary Eustice says in her soft voice. But Sister Jude's eyes are scanning the room. They fix on Pepper, still spinning and clapping and laughing.

"Pepper! For the love of God, sit down! You're going to put everyone in a tizzy!"

For just a moment, Kit catches Grace's eye and winks at her.


	2. Treat

_-Treat -_

Sister Mary Eustice has made an order error. Instead of bags of sugar, a huge shipment of sugar _cubes_ has just arrived in the Briarcliff kitchen.

"Kit!" Sister Mary Eustice exclaims. "I need your help. These sugar cubes need to become loose sugar before Sister Jude finds out."

Kit stops kneading the dough in front of him to give the nun a perplexed expression. "You want me to break all these sugar cubes?"

"Yes, exactly. Sister Jude absolutely cannot find out about this." The fear in the kind nun's eyes is clear. Even though Kit thinks it's a stupid idea, he nods at her.

"Do you have a meat mallet or something? I'm gonna need something to break the cubes with."

"Yes, of course. Wait here," Sister Mary Eustice disappears for a few minutes, returning with a small meat mallet in her hand.

"Hurry!" She says, pressing the tool in Kit's hand and leaving the kitchen.

 _She must be really scared to give a weapon to a crazy person_ , Kit thinks, smiling to himself. He opens a box of the cubes and takes a handful out, putting them in a bowl to be broken.

Kit hopes she doesn't expect him to break all of these sugar cubes down before his shift in the kitchen is over. Grace is in the next crew, and the two aren't allowed to be in the kitchen together. Not since they were caught 'fornicating', as Sister Jude likes to phrase it.

It's easy work, though, and Kit is able to get through ten boxes by the time his hour in the kitchen is up. Sister Mary Eunice returns, leading the next group into the kitchen. Grace smiles at Kit behind the nun's back.

"Give me that bowl, I'm going to pour it into one of the empty sugar backs. You'll be doing this every day, except the Sabbath, until all the cubes are gone," Sister Mary Eunice instructs Kit.

Lucky for the nun, though she has no knowledge of it, there will be one less sugar cube for her to worry about. Kit has one in his pocket, taken to give to Grace.

While Sister Mary Eunice is distracted, Kit slips the cube into the pocket of Grace's dress.

"For later," he whispers to her.

Grace has no idea what Kit has given her until lock down that night. Only then does she think it's safe enough to reach into her pocket.

She holds the sugar cube in the palm of her hand, smiling widely. Kit, only her Kit, would think of something like that.

Grace places the sugar cube on the middle of her tongue and holds it carefully still in her mouth, savoring the sweetness as it dissolves.


	3. Name

_-Name-_

 _Kit_. He only really likes his name when he hears her say it. Not even Alma had made him care much for his name, but he likes the way it sounds in Grace's faint French accent.

Kit likes the way she mouths it when they pass each other in the hallways of Briarcliff, punctuating it with one of her big, pretty smiles. It's one of the only forms of communication they are able to have under the watchful eyes of Sister Jude, but it always brightens Kit's day.

He likes the way she says it in the hushed way she does when either of them are able to sneak out of their rooms and go to the others. They only ever have a few moments when they do this, but there's always a kiss or a hug and always, _always_ Grace says his name like it's the best word in the world.

And he _loved_ the way she said it that day in the kitchen, when he had first moved inside her. That time she said his name reverently, like her own personal prayer. No one had ever said his name like it was the only one that had ever, would ever matter.

Kit only likes his name when it's on Grace's tongue.


	4. Electric

_-Electric-_

Briarcliff is old. It had a long history before becoming a house for the supposedly insane. Due to its age, and the fact that electricity was not always a part of its makeup, it does not take much for the electricity to go out at Briarcliff.

Strong winds. Too much snow. A lightning bolt that hits just right. There's a myriad of ways for the power to go out.

Kit and Grace live for these moments.

You see, when the lights go out, hysteria usually ensues. It's not unusual to hear Pepper howl, as she is afraid of the dark. Others think they have died, or are going to die, and start to go truly crazy. There is usually enough chaos that Grace and Kit can go unnoticed and slip away wherever they like.

When the lights go out, they always find each other, and they steal some time for themselves.

They may go up into one of the staircases, hiding themselves away to whisper and hold each other in the dark. Or, if they are feeling especially brave, they may go down below the asylum and through the death chutes to steal a few minutes outside before having to run back in.

When the lights go out, Kit can love Grace properly. He can lay her down, kiss her slowly, take his time.

They can lay quietly afterwards, tangled in each other's limbs. Kit can lay kisses down on her skin, across her cheeks and her collar bones and down the length of her leg. With no rush, Grace can pretend that they are married and live in a grand mansion that they like to christen with their love.

There is alone time hidden within the dark, at least for Kit and Grace.


	5. Teach Me

_-Teach Me-_

Kit learned a lot of things from Grace.

He learned how to tuck the pills that made him feel dead on his feet into the pocket of his cheek, so that they went unnoticed when the orderlies checked the patients' mouths. Grace taught him to save them there, and then to spit them into his hand so the pills could be hidden in a pocket until they could be flushed down a toilet.

He learned the proper way to knead dough when her small, flour-covered hands came over his.

"You're doing it all wrong," Grace said in her lilting, soft French accent. "Your bread is going to fall flat."

He learned that murder was not black and white, as he'd originally thought. Grace taught him that murder could actually be justified, and his world views suddenly changed from two stark contracts to a murky gray.

Mostly Grace taught Kit that the heart had room enough for more than one love. Alma was often in the back of his mind, and always deep within his soul, but that part of his life was over. Where Alma was a warm, comforting blanket of memory, Grace was the bright sunshine in his cloudy here and now.


	6. Chasm

_-Chasm-_

Before his stint in Briarcliff, there was not a doubt in Kit's mind that Alma was his true, his _only_ love.

But after? He wasn't so sure.

Kit had two women he loved, and two children: Tiny, beautiful Julia, his daughter with Alma, and talkative, happy Thomas, his son with Grace. It was a predicament, to say the least.

"I have an idea," Kit had said, after awkwardly introducing Alma and Grace. They had met before, of course, but back on Earth, things were different.

"Why don't we all live together?" It was the best of both worlds in Kit's mind. He was over the moon at having Alma back, but at the same time he did _not_ want to give up Grace. Kit needed them both. He wanted them both.

"I think that's a great idea," Grace had said, with one of her huge, beaming smiles. Alma, on the other hand, had eyed Kit and Grace coolly. She only nodded.

 _Alma_ was legally Kit's wife. Grace could not take that from her. However, in the thinking of the time and especially because of her skin color, it also meant she should be unfailingly subservient to Kit.

So if he said they were to be a family of five—one father, two mothers, and two children—then they would be a family of five.

That detached nod created the first crack Kit felt between him and Alma.

The five of them moved into the house Kit and Alma had previously shared. Now Alma had her own bedroom, as well as Grace, and the babies shared the other bedroom. Kit bounced between Alma's and Grace's bedrooms.

On the first night, Kit spent the night with Alma, who was polite, at best.

"What's wrong?" Kit asked her.

"Nothing." That was Alma's answer every time he asked. "I'm just tired. It's nice to be home."

Like a broken record, those three answers were the only ones Alma would give in response to Kit's questions. And that was the second crack.

Then, for a while, it seemed like things were going to be okay. Alma and Grace eventually grew to be friends. Things in the Walker/Bertrand household were happy.

Until Julia and Thomas began talking. Grace wanted Thomas to learn French, so that he would grow to be bilingual like his mother. So Grace started teaching French to both Thomas _and_ Kit.

Alma refused to learn French. She refused to let Julia learn French. And that was the third crack.

There was also the fact that Alma was mum on the subject of the aliens. Kit and Grace loved to talk about it; sometimes, it was the entirety of what their pillow talk consisted of.

"You don't think it's important to try to figure this out?" Kit asked Alma quietly one night, when they were alone in Alma's bedroom. "What if they come back? I want Julia and Thomas to be safe."

"And I want you and Grace to shut the hell up about it! No! I _don't_ think it's important! It happened, it's over, we move on!"

And that was the fourth crack.

Alma had been so mad that her next words were "Just go."

So Kit retreated to Grace's bedroom, where they talked about Briarcliff.

"I hope Pepper is okay," Grace had whispered to Kit in the dark. "I have been thinking about her."

"I'm sure she's fine," Kit reassured her. "We know she's smarter than people think. She's a fighter."

As their children grew, so did the cracks between Kit and Alma. They grew until they were an unpassable chasm filled with words like _aliens, Briarcliff, French, Bloody Face, Sister Jude._

But with Grace, it was like Kit was sewn to her. They were two sides of the same coin, perfectly melded and made for each other.

Alma hated them both for it.


	7. Not Crazy

_-Not Crazy-_

"I'm not crazy."

It was one of the first things Grace said to Kit. And it was a phrase she repeated when she told Alma, per Kit's request, about how she had killed her parents.

"I knew exactly what I was doing. It was a choice I made. I'm not crazy. I decided to do it with a clear head. I don't know if the fact that I'm not insane makes it better or worse, what I did."

Grace was surprised to see sadness, _compassion_ , in Alma's eyes.

It seemed the two women, sitting on Alma's bed, had finally found some common ground not tainted by aliens or jealousy over sharing Kit.

Alma pulled Grace into a hug.

"You did what you needed to do to protect yourself. People like that aren't fit to live, anyway."

Alma told Grace something she'd never said out loud, not even to Kit.

"I don't blame women for killing men who have hurt them in that way. Growing up where I did, as an African American girl, there were plenty of white men who forced themselves on black girls because they knew the cops would look the other way. I'd have liked to kill them, even if I was just a little girl."

Here was one thing they could agree on. Something that made Grace think maybe, just maybe, she and Alma could be friends.

But those little green men had created differences in Alma and Grace that neither could ever hope to reconcile.

"I think you were right," Grace whispered to Kit when she got back to her bedroom. It was Kit's night with her. Grace felt the need to whisper because her bedroom and Alma's shared a wall.

"I think maybe we'll be friends after all. She was really nice about it."

Kit pulled Grace down on top of him on the bed and kissed her.

"I told you Alma would understand. You two really aren't all that different."

Grace thought maybe Kit was right. Finally, there was _something_ she and Alma had in common. She never thought she'd see the day, but here it was.


	8. Alma

_-Alma-_

Aliens, maybe.

Bloodyface, possibly, if he managed to escape prison.

Old age, she hoped.

Of all the ways she thought she might die one day, the name _Alma_ never crossed Grace's mind.

 _What you put out into the world comes back to you._

When the ax first sinks into her back, this is what Grace hears. Her own voice, speaking to Kit so long ago in the cold and dark of Briarcliff.

This is what is most prominent in her moments of dying, her own voice speaking words she always knew in her heart were true.

It is not the pain of the ax cutting deep, deep into her flesh and bones. It is not her own hot blood flowing over skin. It is not Kit's angry voice shouting at Alma. It is not even Kit's hands, his gentle touch, the loving kiss he places against her cheek as she feels herself slip into darkness.

Her own voice from years ago.

A final thought before it all goes black, _I should have known._


End file.
